Twenty-Four Preludes for Violin and Piano

Music is my personal Fate Lera Auerbach 2009Our Russian day
continues with Lera Auerbach, an exile like both Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. On a tour of USA in 1991 she
spontaneously decided to stay and to continue her studies at the Juillard. She
has described the experience of being completely on her own in a strange city
as being critical for her development as both a person and an artist.She is now well-known to Bantry audiences
from her appearances at last year’s Festival. Among other works, she played her Twenty-four Preludes for Piano composed in her Preludes Year, 1999,
when she also wrote this evening’s cycle and a third cycle for cello and piano.
This evening’s work was written for and dedicated to Vadim Gluzman and Angela
Yoffe.The composer
describes her work as follows:Re-establishing
the value and expressive possibilities of all the major and minor tonalities is
as valid at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was during Bach’s
time, especially if we consider the aesthetics of Western music and its
progress with regard – or disregard – to tonality during the last century. The
Twenty-Four Preludes follow the circle of fifths, thus covering the entire
tonal spectrum.In
writing this work I wanted to create a continuum that would allow these short
pieces to be united into a single composition. The challenge was not only to
write a meaningful and complete prelude that might be only a minute long, but
also for this short piece to be an organic part of a larger composition with
its own form. Looking at something familiar yet from an unexpected perspective
is one of the peculiar characteristics of these pieces. They are often not what
they appear to be at first glance. The context and order of the preludes is
important in understanding them.

Lera’s note
undersells this extraordinary and fabulous work, which rivets the listener with
its fantastical invention and potent lyricism. It veers suddenly from explosive
brutality to miraculous peace, at
times ominous and threatening, at others strangely beautiful. The cycle has
been described as sophisticated
late twentieth century excursions into realms of complex discord, perverse
lullaby, existential malaise and penetratingly distilled melody, all of which
form a palpable whole of astonishing allure and frisson.